By DAN RALEY, P-I REPORTER

Updated 10:00 pm, Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Dave Wainhouse changed jobs six years ago, and for good reason. The commute was brutal for a family man living in the Seattle suburbs.

Wainhouse, 39, played pro baseball for a dozen seasons in 17 cities, many of them on multiple occasions. He was a human knuckleball, landing all over the place. The right-handed relief pitcher was employed by eight big league organizations, eventually called up and optioned out by five of them, including the hometown Mariners.

"I was the 25th-and-a-half guy on the 25-man roster," he said. "It was up and down, up and down, up and down. Over five years, I probably got sent down eight times, or whenever a position player got hurt. There were no long contracts for me. But there were a lot of worse things I could have been doing."

The Canadian-born Wainhouse had good but not great stuff -- good enough to land him repeated opportunities but not great enough for him to relax and enjoy them.

Yet baseball often treated him in an oddball fashion. He wasn't a phenom coming through the ranks. He flashed raw ability, but wasn't a sure thing for the longest time.

"My story is weird," he said. "Everyone at 13 now is going to be the next A-Rod. I wasn't very good. I just threw hard."

Even at Mercer Island High School, Wainhouse didn't land a permanent spot on the varsity until he was a senior, and he finished 0-6 on the mound that season.

Uninvited, he turned out as a college freshman at Washington State and an unimpressed pitching coach wanted to cut him. Injuries to others provided Wainhouse with an opening. By his junior year, he was starting and relieving on a staff that included John Olerud, compiling a 7-0 record and impressing scouts.

The Montreal Expos made him a No. 1 pick, the 19th player selected in the 1988 June draft, which proved historic on two fronts. He was the first Canadian drafted as a first-rounder and remains WSU's highest-drafted player (four slots higher than pitcher Aaron Sele and two rounds better than Olerud, the latter held back by concerns over an aneurysm).

After pitching for Canada in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Wainhouse started his long-winding odyssey through pro ball. He made his big league debut at the end of 1991, with the Expos giving him a two-game look. The following season, he was pitching for Triple-A Indianapolis and leading the American Association with 21 saves when he stepped off a curb awkwardly and tore left knee cartilage. Just as agonizing, he found out later that Montreal had planned to bring him up that night.

In 1993, he was traded to the Mariners. The offseason call came while he was in Seattle, living in the basement of his sister's Greenwood house.

"I was so excited," he said. "Like any other kid, I grew up going to games at the Kingdome and catching balls in left field. It was awesome. But I didn't do anything with it."

Wainhouse made the team in spring training, no small feat considering Lou Piniella was the new Mariners manager and extra hard on rookie pitchers. He lasted three disastrous regular-season games before getting shipped out, leaving with a 27.00 ERA.

He had back surgery and didn't pitch in 1994, and then started bouncing around the National League. He played parts of two seasons in Pittsburgh, appearing in a career-high 25 games in 1997. Colorado used him for parts of two seasons, St. Louis for one. He couldn't get comfortable.

"I tried to do too much," he said. "In Triple-A, I had fun and just pitched. In the big leagues, I tried not to lose my job. When you do that, you lose your job."

Weird stuff happened, too.

Pitching for the Pirates, Wainhouse threw three scoreless innings of relief at Minnesota. For his fourth inning, he loaded the bases but appeared to get out of the jam when Chuck Knoblauch popped up behind the mound. Two guys called for the ball. They lost it in the Metrodome ceiling. Three runs scored. He was sent out that night.

In St. Louis, Wainhouse threw in three consecutive games, felt normal stiffness and asked for a day off to recover, a request he had never considered before. That night, the third baseman tore up a knee. Another pitcher had been moved earlier in the day. The Cardinals were in a roster bind. They asked a perfectly healthy Wainhouse to go on the 15-day disabled list, and then the 60. That was the end of his big league tour, 85 games, 105 innings, a 1-2 record and 7.37 ERA.

Weary of it all, Wainhouse retired after playing for Triple-A Iowa in 2001. He lives in Kent with his wife, Marci, and kids, Joe, 11, and Ava, 5. He gets the kids off to school each morning while his spouse operates a home design store. The afternoons are his, and he coaches his son's team and another team for 18-year-olds that he once played for.

He also privately tutors aspiring pitchers, 12 to 22, who hail from Marysville to Yakima. He doesn't advertise. People find him. He doesn't sugarcoat anything. Getting to the big leagues is hard, he tells them, and staying there even harder.

"That's why I'm working with kids now," the well-traveled Wainhouse said. "There's nothing these guys can go through that I haven't gone through."